1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a medical imaging technique.
2. Description of the Related Art
(Note: This application references a number of different publications as indicated throughout the specification by reference numbers enclosed in brackets, e.g., [x]. A list of these different publications ordered according to these reference numbers can be found below in the section entitled “References.” Each of these publications is incorporated by reference herein.)
The incidence of brain tumors, including metastasis, is on the rise. Despite considerable advances in diagnosis and treatment, the survival rate of patients with malignant brain tumors has not significantly improved. The mortality from malignant brain tumors remains high, as the median survival rate is 12 to 18 months in patients with glioblastoma and 41 months in patients with anaplastic astrocytomas [60, 88, 108, 114]. Currently, brain tumors are treated through chemotherapy, immunotherapy and surgery. Surgical resection followed by radiotherapy and chemotherapy offers a survival benefit, particularly when resection is complete [80, 86, 88, 94, 100]. Thus, surgical resection provides significant benefit should surgeons achieve near complete resection, and therefore the completeness of removal of the tumor is a major factor in improving survival and quality of life in tumor patients.
Although many advances have been made in the field of brain imaging in the last decades, brain shift, also known as post-imaging brain distortion, often makes intraoperative delineation of the tumors difficult, as its preoperative imaging can no longer be fully relied on [74, 77, 90, 98]. Moreover, it is difficult to distinguish brain tumors from normal surrounding tissue if they exhibit an infiltrative nature, which makes it virtually impossible to achieve near total resection.
Therefore, there is a great need for development of new imaging techniques and integration of multimodality imaging (pre-, intra-, and post-operative imaging, and endoscopic imaging) with advanced mathematical pattern recognition/predictive modeling as well as parallel computing and supercomputing for data analysis. One or more embodiments of the invention can satisfy this need by integrating various imaging technologies (including intra-operative brain imaging/mapping technologies such as thermography, Ultraviolet (UV) imaging, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), and Computed Tomography (CT)) with an intelligent system (including machine learning), to provide a real time intra-operative tool that delineates abnormal cells from normal cells.